Little Dorrit

One of the current Books of the Week on manybooks.net is Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens. It is a great read inspired while watching the PBS Masterpiece Classics presentation of the book. Dickens' father was in The Marshalsea, a debtors' prison, and thus his son had first hand knowledge of it and made it a prime locus in Little Dorrit. The prison was like a little village and a whole world unto itself which we learn about in detail. But there is lots of life, love and story outside the prison, too. We have heroes, heroines and ordinary people, as well as a detestable villain. There is a bureaucracy in love with itself which is called the Circumlocution Office because nothing ever gets done there. And financial chicanery ala Bernie Madoff. I highly recommend Little Dorrit but warn you that it is a long one, 940 pages in print.

Next on Masterpiece Classics is Old Curiosity Shop, also by Charles Dickens, and you might wish to get a head start on it by downloading it from manybooks where you will find lots of good free reads in the public domain. Those with Kindles should select Amazon format (.azw) in the dropdown box.